"Forget it," she broke in. "I should have known. You were born, you
have lived, and you will die an egghead in an ivory tower. Just
remember--the Moraddy dufels the Wistick!" And she swept on upstairs to
pack. And out of my life.
And that's the way it was. Whatever malignant poison had seeped into
the collective brain of the nation, it was certainly a devastating
leveler of all sorts of institutions and values. Wives left husbands
and husbands left wives. Joint bank accounts vanished. Families
disintegrated. Wall street crumpled.
Developments were swift and ominous. The Army split up into various
groups. Most of the enlisted men favored the Moraddy, but the officers
and older non-coms pledged the Wistickian faith. Their power was
sufficient to hold many in line, but a considerable number in the lower
ranks deserted and joined forces with the Moraddians, who held the
eastern half of the country.
The Wisticks ruled the western half with an iron hand, and all signs
pointed toward civil war. Labor and military authorities conscripted
the entire population regardless of age, sex or religious convictions.
For my own part, I slipped away from the campus and fled north
into the Oregon mountains. It was not that I was afraid to fight,
but I rebelled at the absolute stupidity of the whole thing. The
idea--fighting because of a few words!
But they did.
The destruction was frightful. However, it was not as bad as many had
thought it would be. The forces of the Wistick leveled the city of New
York, true, but it took three H-bombs to do the job, instead of one,
as the Air Force had claimed. In retaliation, San Francisco and Los
Angeles were destroyed in a single night by cleverly placed atom bombs
smuggled in by a number of fifth-columnist wives who gained access to
the cities under the pretext of returning to their husbands. This was
a great victory for the Moraddians, even though the women had to blow
themselves up to accomplish their mission.
The Moraddian forces were slowly beaten back toward the Atlantic
shores. They were very cunning fighters and they had youthful courage
to implement that cunning. But their overall policy lacked the
stability and long-range thinking necessary to the prosecution of total
war. One day they might overrun many populous areas and the next day,
due to the constant bickering and quarreling among their own armies,
they would lose all they had won, and more, too.
Finally, in desperation, they loosed their most horrible weapon, germ
warfare. But they forgot to protect themselves against their own
malignity. The Semantic War ground to a shuddering halt. The carrion
smell of death lay round the world.
The dufellation of the Wistick and the Moraddy.
* * * * *
So here I am, scuttling around in the forests like a lonely pack-rat.
It is not the sort of life I would choose if there were any other
choice. Yet life has become very simple.
I enjoy the simple things and I enjoy them with gusto. When I find
food that suits my stomach, I am happy. When I quench my thirst, I am
happy. When I see a beautiful sunset from one of my mountain crags, I
am happy. It takes little when you have little, and there have been few
men who have had less.
Only one thing troubles me. I suppose it doesn't matter, but I go on
wondering.